A reconstructed life · The Atlas
A midwife's ledger, and the son who had no words
“As Mãos de Aurora”✦Portugal✦1972–1975✦2 fragments
On a blizzard night in 1972 a mountain midwife had to choose between a mother and the child she could not save, and lived under the village's verdict ever after. Her ledger and her son's unsent letter — two fragments that give her impossible choice its true name.
- 01
The midwife's ledger
A midwife's ledger, a locked church in the Beira mountains · Winter, 1972
14 February 1972
Roque house, Idalina. Breech birth. Haemorrhage. The doctor was trapped in the snow, two valleys away.
I saved the mother. Not the boy.
God forgive me the arithmetic I did.
— the midwife of Cerdeira
- 02
The son's unsent draft
An unsent draft among a son's effects, Paris · circa 1975
Mother,
I want to write and I can't. I'm ashamed to send so little.
Lucília sends beautiful letters, and I send money and go quiet. It isn't that I don't think of you.
It's that I don't have the words.
Fernando
This life passed through real places. Leave one of your own near it.
Leave a letter near here